Tag Archives: Donald Trump

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Monday he will address his proposed immigration overhaul in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday and will seek Democratic support for it.

Speaking to reporters after a swearing-in ceremony for new Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Trump said his immigration overhaul will have to be bipartisan “because the Republicans don’t really have the votes to get it done in any other way.”

Trump also said his speech will cover his efforts to lower trade barriers around the world for American exports. “We have to have reciprocal trade. It’s not a one-way deal anymore,” he said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has set up a team to investigate individuals and organizations providing support to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamist group in Lebanon that the U.S. has branded a terrorist organization, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday.

Republicans have criticized former President Barack Obama following a December Politico report that the Obama administration hindered a Drug Enforcement Administration program targeting Hezbollah’s trafficking operations during its negotiation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Republican President Donald Trump says Obama gave away too much to Iran to secure the agreement, which gives Iran relief from sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Sessions said the Justice Department will assemble leading investigators and prosecutors for the Hezbollah Financing and Narcoterrorism Team to ensure all investigations under the DEA program, called Project Cassandra, will be completed.

“The Justice Department will leave no stone unturned in order to eliminate threats to our citizens from terrorist organizations and to stem the tide of the devastating drug crisis,” Sessions said.

LONDON (Reuters) – Iran said on Monday it might reconsider its cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog if the United States failed to respect its commitments in the nuclear deal Tehran struck with world powers in 2015.

U.S. President Donald Trump must decide by mid-January whether to continue waiving U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil exports under the terms of the nuclear pact that eased economic pressure on Tehran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program.

In October, Trump refused to certify that Iran was complying with the deal, also known by its acronym JCPOA, even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was.

“If the United States does not meet its commitment in the JCPOA, the Islamic Republic of Iran would take decisions that might affect its current cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, was quoted as telling IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano in a phone call.

The IAEA is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and is scrutinizing Iran’s compliance with the agreement.

Supporters of the deal insist that strong international monitoring will prevent Iran from developing nuclear bombs. Iran has denied that it is seeking nuclear weapons.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said on Monday that Tehran “would not prejudge the decision that America would take on January 13,” but said it was ready for all possible outcomes and “all options were on the table”.

Deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said world powers should be ready for a possible U.S. withdrawal from the deal.

“The international community might come to this conclusion that the United States will withdraw from the JCPOA in the next few days,” Araghchi was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.

“The international community must be ready for this development,” Araghchi added, warning that such a decision would affect stability in the region.

Trump is weighing whether the pact serves U.S. security interests, while the other world powers that negotiated it – France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China – still strongly support it.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in September that the United States should consider staying in the Iran deal unless it were proven that Tehran was not abiding by the agreement or that it was not in the U.S. national interest to do so.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Robin Pomeroy, William Maclean)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump signed Republicans’ massive $1.5 trillion tax overhaul into law on Friday, cementing the biggest legislative victory of his first year in office, and also approved a short-term spending bill that averts a possible government shutdown.

Trump said he wanted to sign the tax bill before leaving Washington on Friday for his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, rather than stage a more formal ceremony in January, so he could keep his promise to finish work before Christmas.

The two pieces of legislation represent Trump’s most significant accomplishment with Congress since taking office in January, as well as a sign of what awaits when he returns from Florida after the Christmas holiday.

The tax package, the largest such overhaul since the 1980s, slashes the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and temporarily reduces the tax burden for most individuals as well.

Trump praised several companies that have announced employee bonuses in the wake of the bill’s passage, naming AT&T, Boeing, Wells Fargo, Comcast and Sinclair Broadcast Group.

“Corporations are literally going wild over this,” he said.

Democrats had opposed the bill as a giveaway to the wealthy that would add $1.5 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt during the next decade.

The spending bill extends federal funding through Jan. 19, largely at current levels. It does nothing to resolve broader disputes over immigration, healthcare and military spending.

Republicans also are divided over whether to follow up their sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code with a dramatic restructuring of federal benefit programs.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he would like to revamp welfare and health programs but Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told National Public Radio on Monday that he was not interested in cutting those programs without Democratic support.

Trump’s year also closes with significant turnover of many top staffers who had been in the White House since early in his term. On Friday, the White House confirmed Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn and Jeremy Katz, who worked under White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, were leaving.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet are set to visit Puerto Rico on Tuesday to assess the U.S. territory’s rebuilding in the three months since Hurricane Maria devastated homes, businesses and the power grid.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson will travel to Puerto Rico, where about a third of the island’s 3.4 million residents are still without power, hundreds remain in shelters, and thousands have fled to the U.S. mainland.

The visit comes as Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday were planning to unveil a disaster aid package totaling $81 billion, according to a senior congressional aide. Some of that aid would go to Puerto Rico, but also to states like Texas and Florida that were hit by other hurricanes and to California, which is grappling with wild fires.

Even before Maria savaged Puerto Rico, the island was contending with $72 billion in debt. Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello has asked the federal government for a total of $94.4 billion in aid, including $31.1 billion for housing and $17.8 billion to rebuild its ruined power grid.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has so far approved more than $660 million in aid for individuals in Puerto Rico as well as more than $450 million in public assistance.

Nielsen and Carson will receive detailed briefings on rebuilding efforts and see how federal aid is helping residents to recover, a DHS official said.

Nielsen, who oversees FEMA, and Rossello are slated to hold a news conference.

The visit comes as Congress prepares to vote on a tax overhaul bill that Puerto Rican officials have said they fear will hurt the commonwealth’s pharmaceutical manufacturing sector – the cornerstone of the island’s economy – at a time when Puerto Rico can least afford to lose jobs and tax revenue.

Puerto Rico’s government has said 64 people died because of the hurricane, but after multiple media estimates of dramatically higher figures, Rossello on Monday ordered an official review of the death toll.

Pastor Jim and Lori Bakker welcome special guests Tom Horn, and Derek and Sharon Gilbert as they discuss President Trump’s recent declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the significance of this bringing us another step closer to the second coming of Christ. With special music from Dino Kartsonakis.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will make a final push on Wednesday to shepherd a Republican tax overhaul across the finish line, hosting congressional negotiators for lunch before a speech in which he will make closing arguments for the legislation.

Republican tax writers from the Senate and House of Representatives worked into Tuesday evening to reconcile differences between the separate plans passed by each chamber, as important details, including a final corporate tax rate, remained in flux.

Republican leaders are aiming to vote on the sweeping legislation before Christmas. That timetable became more crucial after Tuesday’s upset win by Democrat Doug Jones over Republican Roy Moore in Alabama’s special U.S. Senate election.

Jones’ victory trims the Republicans’ already narrow Senate majority to 51-49, which could make it more difficult for them to push through legislation.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday will call on Republicans to delay the tax vote until the newest senator can be seated, likely in early January.

Republicans were still trying to finalize important details without increasing the deficit impact of legislation, which could add as much as $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to independent estimates.

Both House and Senate bills proposed slashing the corporate rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, but negotiators were discussing on Tuesday whether to raise that rate to 21 percent in the final bill, lawmakers said.

Tax writers were also still determining a top rate for individual taxpayers and weighing how to best scale back popular individual deductions for mortgage interest and local tax payments that the Senate and House bills treated differently.

“We’re still talking,” No. 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn said late Tuesday of a possible 21 percent corporate rate.

Trump is seeking to sign a tax bill by the end of the year to achieve Republicans’ first major legislative victory since they took control of both chambers of Congress and the White House in January.

After hosting Republican lawmakers for lunch, Trump will deliver his speech on tax legislation alongside five middle class families who would benefit, senior administration officials said.

He was expected to counter claims the Republican tax plan would largely benefit corporations and the wealthy by highlighting how it would also cut rates for lower- and middle-income taxpayers, who could see additional benefits, such as higher wages, result from the corporate rate cut, the officials said.

Independent government analyses by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which assists congressional tax writers, and the Congressional Budget Office, which examines the budget impact of legislation, both concluded that wealthier taxpayers would disproportionately benefit from the Republican proposals.

When asked who stands to benefit most from Republican tax legislation, more than half of American adults selected either the wealthy or large U.S. corporations, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday.